In her quest for medicinal plants now extinct in Israel, Sallon asked Mordechai Kislev, an archeobotanist at Bar-Ilan University, for some ancient seeds he had received in the 1970s from Yigael Yadin, the prominent Israeli archeologist who excavated Masada.
"He asked what we wanted to do with them, and when I said we wanted to grow them, he said, `You're mad,'" Sallon said, adding that after "a lot of persuasion," five seeds were handed over.
Three of the seeds were planted by Solowey,..on March 3 the soil in one pot cracked, and a shoot later appeared.
"I couldn't believe it," Solowey said....
After the seed germinated, Sallon sent the two unplanted seeds to the University of Zurich in Switzerland for carbon dating, which showed that they were from around the 1st Century. A leaf of the plant was sent for DNA analysis to determine how it differed from modern varieties.
The date seed is one of the oldest seeds to be germinated anywhere and is believed to be the oldest dormant tree seed brought to life.Solowey said prospects for re-creating the ancient Judean date remain precarious, even if the palm she is growing turns out to be a female with the potential of flowering and bearing fruit.,,,....
"With luck, in three years maybe we'll get some flowers, and perhaps we'll know something about the past."
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